Hey
I have some questions about Goo warlocks
What are some good examples of a Warlock in movies,TV, books?
Any advice on how to play one?
Can pact of the blade work with a goo warlock?
What alignment is associated with goo warlocks and their patrons?
First as a sidenote see if your DM will let you play the
OneD&D Playtest 7 version of the Warlock and
especially of the Pact of the Great Old One. Pact of the Blade is OP from level 11 when you stack Thirsting Blade with Lifedrinker and the Spirit Shroud spell and the L11 boosts - but other than that everything's good.
If you can't then Pact of the Blade is known to be pretty weak without the Hexblade subclass (rather than GOOlock) because you're trying to use the wrong stats and have very little synergy.
Either way the warlock is arguably the squishiest class in the game at mid-high levels because, unlike sorcerers and wizards, they don't have first level spell slots to burn on defensive spells like Mage Armour (which you don't need if you can wear light armour, making it a waste of an invocation), Shield, and Absorb Elements. And being this squishy of course makes getting into melee combat a risky thing. Fiendish Vigour is a great defensive invocation at second level but doesn't scale as you level up.
The art to playing a warlock is to treat your spells as showstoppers (and pick ones that scale) while using your invocations for above and beyond basic uses most of the time. (Don't take anything that gives you a 1/day spell as an invocation). Invocations worth looking at are:
- Eldritch Blast. There are ways of building a warlock that doesn't spam Eldritch Blast but (other than a OneD&D Bladelock) they require some very specific interactions.
- Agonizing Blast; this is what makes Eldritch Blast actually good. Adding your charisma modifier to all bolts of the EB. It's more or less a must have by level 5.
- There are other invocations to buff Eldritch Blast. But pushes, pulls, slows, and extra range are all DM dependent.
- Extra non-Eldritch Blast Damage
- Maddening Hex. This is nowhere near as good as it looks; first it requires the Hex spell (see my note on Concentration below) and second it requires a bonus action, meaning you must already have hexed your target on a previous turn.
- Cloak of Flies. Eww. Create a damage aura around you. Most useful for bladelocks as they are the ones who want to be in melee; for anyone else this is closer to a defence.
- Illusions; with their ability to cast illusions at will only a specialist illusionist wizard can come close to challenging a warlock for mastery of illusions
- Mask of Many Faces; the ability to change your appearance at will is far more powerful than as a first level spell and can allow for shenanigans and farces where you walk behind a wall and come out appearing to be someone else
- Misty Visions; Silent Image as an at will ability is just useful for games, for throwing up doors that appear to be closed, and for other shenanigans.
- One With Shadow; the invisibility power is too restricted in the PHB and very nice with the restrictions removed in the playtest
- Master of Myriad Forms is ... not as good as it looks, but lets you shapeshift. It's a concentration ability. Way too high level in the PHB but useful in the playtest.
- Defenses; as mentioned the Warlock is squishy
- Fiendish Vigour doesn't scale; 5thp as an action is great at L2 and useless at L12
- Armour of Shadows; one point more AC than simple studded leather just isn't worth an invocation
- Tomb of Levistus; giving up your turn is a huge cost.
- Sight. A lot of invocations deal with giving the warlock better vision of the world.
- Devil's Sight; the ability to see through any darkness is pretty useful
- Eldritch Sight; Detect Magic at will is surprisingly useful as you can have it up all the time and therefore be proactively ready for a whole lot of things whereas the wizard needs a 10 minute ritual to have it last the next 10 minutes. Campaign specific
- Eyes of the Rune Keeper is just Comprehend Languages; probably should be skipped
- Gaze of Two Minds - without the playtest is little more than a Message cantrip; with it there are shenanigans as you can also cast from e.g. your fighter's position.
- Ghostly Gaze - looking through walls is great.
- Witch Sight - seeing through illusions (inc. invisibility) and shapechanges is normally situational, but amazing in a few campaigns.
- Visions of Distant Realms - Arcane Eye at will is incredible but you get it late
- Communication; the GOOlock is already telepathic. This extends it.
- Beast Speech - speaking with animals to either be a druid or fairytale princess.
- Whispers of the Grave - and now they don't have to be alive to talk with them
- Movement; these really are too high level to be useful in the PHB version but have been made sensible in the playtest
- Ascendant Step; Levitate isn't fly but does solve a lot of problems
- Otherworldly Leap; in the PHB Jump is an awful spell and this is directly competing with Otherworldly leap. In the playtest Jump has been buffed and
- Gift of the Depths; breathing under water (plus helping others) and swimming like a fish. Where is your campaign set?
- Relentless Hex; only good for Pact of the Blade/Hexblade warlocks to teleport after their target
- Increasing your pact boon
- Pact of the Tome: Book of Ancient Secrets for ritual casting
- Pact of the Blade: Thirsting Blade for two attacks, Lifedrinker for extra damage
- Pact of the Chain: Investment of the Chain Master to boost your familiar, Voice of the Chain Master for ridiculousness
Of course you can't have many of them. But there's a lot of good stuff there. As mentioned don't take anything that is a spell you can only use once a day.
And that's how you play a warlock as a party member; you use either Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast or your Pact of the Blade to reach a good combat baseline, can throw high level spells like a primary caster when you really need to bring it, and you use your utility invocations to add something at will no other party member can do that's a signature ability. The invocations you pick have a lot of influence.
Oh, and warlocks are spellcasters that take a little more time to pick their spells between levels but are much faster at using them in play. The key thing is that warlocks only have a single spell level at a time - so pick spells that level up with you (e.g. by adding targets) and try to have a wide spectrum of spells; you only need one spell of any given type because you only have one spell level. No real need to have both Fireball and Hunger of Hadar.
Finally take care with your Concentration choices. With (good) Invocations it doesn't matter
that much; you can only have one Concentration invocation up at a time but can switch between them freely because you can recast without cost (so if you have the Levitate and Silent Image Invocations you can always use the one you need, just not both at once). With spells this can be harder because spell slots cost resources. This doesn't matter so much with spells like
Hunger of Hadar because once it's done it's done - but Hex is concentration and lasts a long time, so if you then try to throw a Silent Image you lose the Hex spell. This is why I don't rate Hex as highly as many do.
